Small Business Advocate: Be willing to make the tough decisions

"The problem with humanity is the humans." That's a maxim I coined while witnessing Earthlings continue to go to war over differences in ideology and interests.

Three of the four gospels reported that Jesus warned, "... there will be wars and rumors of wars." Indeed, more than two millennia later, wars are still being waged with weapons of destruction.

But, thankfully, one redeeming trend is that wars that are "Breaking News!" these days are increasingly fought with words. Even though there has been physical fighting in the recent conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, technology has helped make words become a powerful weapon-of-choice.

Here in the U.S., a war of words is escalating about how debt-ridden states address financial promises made with 20th century political expectations, now in conflict with 21st century fiscal realities. Stakeholders on both sides of this debate are at word-daggers drawn in legal and constitutional combat.

In your small business, you know that if past financial projections don't truck with the current business reality in front of you, hard decisions have to be made about painful adjustments. Consequently, we wanted to know what our small business radio and Internet audience thinks about the conflict created when state governments attempt to balance their budgets by bringing employee compensation and benefits more in line with the private sector. Here's what we were told.

Those who said they "agree with protesting employees and unions" represented 18 percent of our respondents. Those who think "state employee compensation packages should be more in line with the private sector" were in the extreme majority at 82 percent.

Wisconsin is currently ground-zero for these intrastate stand-offs. Indeed, what happens there will likely become the tipping point for how the conflict between 20th century expectations and 21st century reality will play out across America, including Washington.

Every small business owner knows that the laws of finance will allow negative cash to be augmented with debt as a temporary means to an end, but not as a long-term way of life. When state or federal governments make a practice of defying this law they create adverse conditions that ultimately hurt the economy and the success of small businesses, which brings into context another maxim I have coined that you can see below.

Write this on a rock ...

Anything that hurts small business hurts everyone.

Contact Jim Blasingame, host of "The Small Business Advocate Show," at jimb@jbsba.com.